thesis overview

1. Scholarly work on the feelings in Jeremiah has produced an understanding of the prophetic task that tends to ignore the feelings. Instead, the feelings of Jeremiah are often dismissed as merely a redaction to the original text and/or a fascinating insight into the psychological state of the prophet. Even those who understand the feelings as being representative of more than Jeremiah are not in unity over whether the feelings are representative of God or the community. This paper thus hopes to explain how the feelings function both for the prophet as an individual and for the prophetic task.

2. Chapter Two will list the feelings textually evident in the entire Book of Jeremiah, demonstrating the range and extent of feelings found therein. The range of feelings displayed will include, but not be limited to, anger, sadness, compassion/love, and joy. The agent and incitement for these feelings, as well as the historical situation(s) will then be given.

3. Chapter Three further explains the feelings given in Chapter Two. The listed feelings represent those manifested by God, the people of Israel, and Jeremiah. The parallel relationships between the agents of the feelings and the feelings that they manifest, as well as the incitements of those feelings, will be diagrammatically presented. This investigation of the agents and incitements of the feelings will indicate that these feelings are more than just a reflection of Jeremiah’s internal life. [need to show how it is proving that feelings are representative]

4. Chapter Four shows that the prophet’s feelings are not only his own, but are also those of the community and God. Recent scholarship is moving away from focusing on the feelings as being solely about Jeremiah in order to show how the feelings are representative of the LORD and/ or the community. Yet, the focus is more towards the feelings being representative of a single group than seeing the necessity of a three-dimensional representation (of self, of community and of God) of the feelings. It will be argued that a three-dimensional understanding of the representation of the feelings is the most appropriate understanding of the feelings in the book. This understanding then provides a deeper insight into the prophetic task.

5. Chapter Five provides several examples of how this proposal is also true of other prophets and thus elucidates other prophetic literature.

6. Chapter Six concludes by providing indications to how the representative nature of Jeremiah’s feelings provide insight into God and His relationship with His people. It will be fruitful to apply this fuller understanding of the affective dimension of the prophetic task to a reexamination of the necessity and function of Christ’s incarnation and to a grounding and reevaluation of the church’s contemporary prophetic task.